Barely missed a second bear!

For the second time this season I had to brake hard to miss a bear crossing the road against the light. This one chose to cross an unlighted area on route 97 in downtown Hancock just three houses up the street from the Rite Aide Pharmacy. You never know. The entire system was hit by thunderstorms Friday night and was high and muddy Saturday morning. With tricos out of the picture, I waited until three o'clock to venture out. Surprisingly, with almost no place else fishable, the upper WB wasn't crowded. With the warmer water temps from the rain, however, the sulfur hatch had started early and was for the most part over. I decided to stick around and stand in the cold water to beat the heat which again was well into the nineties. Not having fished the river for almost three weeks I didn't have a clue what to expect. From the time I started until dark, sulfurs and olives hatched in modest numbers, there were more isos than I have seen hatch since early June, but the stars of the show were the big yellow drakes that hatched abundantly from the time I arrived until dark. The fish ate subsurface with nary a yellow drake eaten. Floated all kinds of duns over them without a single take. Switched to emerger patterns and got some smaller fish to eat. It wasn't until almost dark that the fish started looking up. When I thought to look down I saw that there were sulfur spinners on the water. Made the switch and ended up in a flurry of action. A Troutfitter regular walked down to where I was fishing to watch and chat during the feeding frenzy. He witnessed my hooking and landing of the "fish of the day" a nice 20 inch brown that surprised me by eating the spinner with a big splashy rise. I was watching what I thought was my fly floating along unmolested three feet away. Its sometimes better to be lucky than good.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Had To Get Out The Neosporin For The Tooth Cuts On My Index Finger.

  To say the Delaware  is a hard river to figure is an understatement. Yesterday was an overcast day that had fishermen thinking olives. Turned out the water was probably too warm for olives and too cold for sulfurs, in short, a dud. Today the air temp was a little cooler, (I think), with a mix of sun and clouds and the sulfurs, (both yesterdays and todays), hatched. The fish? At least where I was, went nuts, threw caution to the wind, and ate everything that came down their feeding lane, both with and without hooks. Heard from two sources that the sulfur hatch at the red barn was also very good today. If my last report on the red barn sulfurs was erroneous, blame it on Ed who has been in Hawaii for the last two weeks, (hence no reliable red barn reports). The fishing mid-day was so good, and the number of fishermen in the "Zone", (it's Friday afternoon), so high, that I decided to fish down river during the evening hours. Fished a pool in the middle section from 6:30 unt
Read more

Fishing A Cold Blow From Out Of The North.

  Jean came down and we spent the weekend watching wildlife in the backyard, driving around the area and enjoying two "nights out", one with David and Maryann, (the apprentice Troutfitter Inn cleaning lady). A shout out of thanks to her for spending four hours on the road to have dinner with us. Not sure the company or the meal was worth the drive. We drove up to Stilesville to witness the hordes of anglers, and then along the reservoir all the way up to Walton, where we usually stop and go in some of the shops. It was threatening to rain so we elected to keep going. It was raining on top of the mountains but we took route 206?? to Downsville anyway. We hit the rain part way up the mountain and then drove down the other side to Downsville in a torrential down pour. Came out of the rain at Downsville and drove down route 30 with the intention of checking  out the trout in some of the BK's thermal refuges, saw the muddy water at "Jaws" and drove back to the Lordvi
Read more

IT'S GOOD TO BE BACK HOME AGAIN!

 It's Wednesday night, a fire is going in the fire place, an empty Perfect Manhattan glass is washed and back up on the shelf, 30 shrimp netted from Zane Gray Creek ((did you know that Zane Gray (famous fly fisherman and writer of westerns) was a dentist and that his office is now a museum that you can visit on the Delaware River?)), have been consumed by Jean and me, prior to the three pieces of venison backstrap that traveled from home to Florida and back, an early spring snowstorm is raging outside and most importantly, we're glad to be back home again! With that season opening sentence, Mrs. Haskins has no doubt thrown in the towel and disavowed all responsibility for my literary malfunctions. Run on sentences she could handle, but my never before attempted "double aside" was apparently beyond the pall. I sent her a "Go Duke" banner with apologies and hopefully she will cool off before the fishing heats up. Our trip back home was uneventful. Started at 2
Read more